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My personal goal as a life coach is to only have you as my client for 90 days. When I take on new clients, most of them are in a state of ‘program’. Their minds have been programmed to think a certain way for so long that this thought process can be seen as the continuing symptom causing unhappiness or dissatisfaction.

My goal is to re-align that program. The program can be seen as simply poor habits, or choices that are in your every day life that aren’t moving your life forward. For the average human, it takes 90 days to change a long lasting habit and that’s where I step in as your coach.

In that 90 days, I will give you tools and resources that will help you improve your every day life so that you are living the best version of yourself every single day. For some, it only takes 30 days, for others, it may take a little longer than 90 days. Either situation is okay and, through our relationship, we will discover which path you are on.

But, my 90 day commitment to you is also a selfish one. The sole reason I chose to pursue Life Coaching as a career was to help AS MANY people as I possibly can. If I take on several clients for several years, I can’t realistically achieve that goal.

Also, if I’m still your Life Coach after two years, I haven’t done a very good job 🙂

So let’s get started and begin this 90 day journey to help change your habits and reprogram your mind into creating the best version of you!

Goal setting, goal setting, goal setting! It’s one of the most important first steps to bring positive change to your life and it’s one of my deep specialties and the most value I bring to my life coaching clients. Setting, committing, and achieving goals.

The first and foremost step to establishing a goal is to WRITE IT DOWN. Get it out of your head and onto a sheet of paper. For example, let’s say your goal is to lose weight. If this is one of your goals, then, right now, take out a long sheet of paper and, at the very top write, “I want to lose weight.”

You now have this goal out of your head and into the Universe and you can see it, right there in front of you.

Next step: underneath where you’ve written your goal (in this case we’ve written down, “I want to lose weight.”) write out the word, ‘Why?’ and then reflect on that. Why DO you want to lose weight? Take some time and really brainstorm the reasons why you want to lose weight. It’s very important to establish a powerful ‘why’ to support your goal. Otherwise, you simply have a goal and nothing to support it. Why, why, why. Why do you want to lose weight? Take a moment and write out a paragraph as to why it is you want to lose weight.

Third step: After you’ve written down your goal, and you’ve written out your strong ‘why’, underneath your why paragraph, write out the question, “How?” so that we can focus on HOW you’re going to achieve this goal. Really think about this and write out, at minimum, 10 steps on how you can achieve this goal. Write out 10 things you can commit to without any reservation to help you achieve this goal. You can write out 20 steps, you can write out 15, it’s up to you, but write out at least 10 steps to help you really dig and brainstorm what you’ll need to do to accomplish this goal.

So far you have your goal written down, you’ve established a strong and powerful ‘why’ and you’ve written out at least 10 things that show how you’re going to accomplish your goal. The last step is to go back to the top of the paper where you wrote out your goal, take your pen or pencil and scratch out the word “WANT” and replace it with the word “WILL” so that it reads, “I WILL lose weight.”

Whenever you say or write that you “want” something, you’re not pushing yourself to achieve that something, you’re simply creating a want for it. When you tell yourself (and the Universe) that you WILL do something, yourself and the Universe will take note.

Now take this sheet of paper and place it somewhere where you can view it every single day. Your fridge, your computer, your workstation, your front door, any place where you’ll see it every day so that it can serve as a reminder that this is a commitment you made with yourself.

Scroll down to hear the seven-minute podcast recorded in my car that goes over the essential points in this blog.

As mentioned in previous life coaching blogs, the most popular goal amongst my life coaching clients is losing weight. Sometimes, losing weight quickly. What I want to cover in this quick blog is the importance of committing to wholesale change. Avoid the word diet (which is perceived, whether you know it or not, as something temporary) and focus on a sustainable goal.

Over a decade, I’ve studied health and nutrition to use in my own fitness routines and there have been A LOT of popular diets. Most popularly called ‘fad diets’. Here are some essential and important points to remember when realizing this goal of losing weight:

Avoid fad diets. If your eating style has a name attached to it (e.g. Atkins, Keto, South Beach), you’re on a fad diet. While these diets give tremendous results in a short period of time, this translates to short-lived and isn’t sustainable.

When changing your eating habits, decrease, do not eliminate. If chocolate has been a regular part of your diet, suddenly eliminating chocolate will make your life extremely uncomfortable and you will eventually go back to eating it (sometimes, initially, in larger quantities than you were before!).

The biologically need to consume important nutrients (e.g. carbohydrates, good fats, dairy vitamins) is more powerful than your willpower. Eliminating an important nutrient from your eating habits isn’t sustainable (or healthy!).

If you lose 20 pounds in a month through a fad diet, look forward to gaining that weight back within the next few months. Whatever behavior was used to lose that weight will be corrected by your body’s instinctual need (fad diets are also often called yo-yo diets because your weight goes up and down in short periods of time).

The Life Coaching process, overall, can be extremely deep, but fulfilling and I wanted to share a quick snapshot of what one can expect on the initial coaching session. Rarely will my clients experience a lot of me telling them what they SHOULD or OUGHT to do. My sessions are, overall, guided by the client. Much like a therapy session, I use the Socratic approach to help my clients dig deep inside themselves by asking strong questions. Here are a select handful of questions I will ask my clients on the initial session so that we can discover in what direction we should go, moving forward, on other sessions.

1. Why do you feel that you need a life coach?Every Life Coach will (or should) ask this question. It’s an obvious question that helps us uncover the initial motivation of seeking the guidance of a life coach.

2. How’s that going for you?This is a gentle question that allows a soft prod into how deep is the specific issue brought up in Question #1. Often, we’re able to uncover completely separate issues my client wasn’t consciously thinking about. We’re able to attack those head on (typically a limiting belief my client didn’t even know they had!)

3. How long has this been going on?An obvious question that lets me know how far these issues have gone on while showing my client, front-and-center, how long they’ve been living this way.

4. What have you tried to do about it? Always important to uncover if there are any tools that are already working or, conversely, the specific tools that are failing.

5. How’d that work out? A continuation of Question #4 – showing both of us what has/hasn’t worked and the consequences or opportunity those efforts created.

6. How much do you suppose that’s cost you? This doesn’t necessarily have to be any sort of dollar amount. This is a deep question really designed to uncover consequences, limitations, and anything else holding my client back from bringing positive change into their lives.

7. How much longer do you think this is going to go on? Another deep question allowing my client to visualize a future of immediate change.

8. What happens if it doesn’t change? This question is a partner of Question #7, letting my client visualize a future where nothing changes. This question is designed as a wake-up call to show the client how important it is to stop living the way they have.

9. How does that make you feel?This is the deepest question of all. The entire time we’ve been thinking logically about certain circumstances revealed in the session. Some issues the client may not have realized they were dealing with. Turning away from logic and looking inward to the heart and soul, we’re able to come to an agreement that something has to change!

10. What should we do? And this is where the fun begins! Armed with the knowledge of what needs to change, we’re able to team up and figure out, together, what action plan needs to take place to get the momentum rolling for positive permanent growth!

It is important to note, again, that not everyone gets asked every single question, or in this order. My clients show me, through conversation, what they need and we develop an action plan together.

Are you ready for your initial life coaching session? Are you ready to answer these tough questions? Let’s get to work: CONNECT

What is the number one take away you hope your clients have after one of your sessions?

Man, there are a lot of take aways and it really depends on where my client is in the process and really their life. But if I had to choose just one I’d have to say that I hope they feel empowered by the idea that they, personally, have the tools to create positive permanent momentum in their lives. I love the a-ha! moment in my client’s eyes when they connect with that and can feel a spark of energy that positive change IS possible.

Why did you choose Life Coaching?

Too many people have convinced themselves that they aren’t deserving of a positive life. Many people have accepted that life is supposed to be a negative experience. I’ve always wanted to show people that all of these limiting beliefs simply aren’t true. As trite as this may sound, I really do want to help people realize their FULL potential. Because the reality is that life can be a struggle, but it doesn’t have to be a negative experience.

If someone chose not to use Life Coaching, what is one piece of advice you would give them?

Whatever you do, create goals for yourself. Give your life purpose by creating goals and writing those goals down. Then commit to those goals and do whatever it takes to achieve them. And, no matter what, stay the course!

One of my first approaches as a Life Coach is to help people identify how they’re talking to themselves. The first core change I help guide my clients through is the relationship they have with themselves. My life coach clients will hear me say it multiple times and it will most likely be repeated all over my blogs: if you don’t have a positive relationship with yourself, it will be extremely difficult to have a positive relationship with anyone else in your life.

So, the first step we go through in life coaching is “relationship with self”. We identify how we are communicating by looking at the language being used.

Here’s an example of a negative limitation sentence:

“Things like this always happen to ME.”

This sentence is an absolute sentence that creates an image of the person internalizing it as a victim. “Always” and “Me” are the key factors that make this a limitation sentence.

I help my clients guide themselves through seeing each situation, each occurrence as an isolated event. We can’t control the things that happen to us, but we CAN control how we react to them. If you react with positive opportunistic internal sentences, you’ll find yourself having a positive empowering attitude more often!

It’s such a common goal, it gets three separate blogs. Health and nutrition will actually get a lot of attention as, without it, achieving other goals becomes more challenging than they could be if health were more under control.

Losing Weight is actually extremely simple, as it’s basic foundation is driven through static scientific physiology. Essentially, if you do A, you will get B. There is no mystery or magic behind it. The weight loss challenge exists due to the fact that we live in a culture that pushes us to consume all kinds of delicious food. Overcoming the psychological temptation is the key to immersing yourself in the science that will create weight loss.

Here are the three simple keys to losing weight and feeling great:

1. Calorie count

Everyone has a minimum calorie count that will trigger weight loss. You’ll have to figure out your own based on age and height.

2. Micronutrients

Eating 1000 calories of pizza vs eating 1000 calories of carrots will administer the same weight loss results. However, you won’t feel great in either situation…

3. Fitness

This doesn’t mean, essentially, sweating it out at the gym every single day. Fitness could be just getting your heart to pump blood through your veins for 20 minutes at a faster pace than it normally would.

And that’s it. Calorie count, micronutrients, and fitness. So simple, yet so hard to commit to.

So how do we commit to it? Well, that requires intensive goal setting and establishing a powerful WHY, which a life coach can help with.